Girls in Charge Read online

  Ms. Russo was already down at the cab stand, but we had to wait for Forrest. I imagined him deeply asleep after last night’s hotel-wide adventures that included swimming, elevator races, and eating leftover Chinese food on the roof. I held an orange juice in one hand and my laptop in the other while Bet put the finishing touches on my makeup. I didn’t wear much makeup usually, but for the occasion, I decided to use some shimmery eye shadow for the first time. I closed my eyes to be a better makeover candidate.

  “You’re done,” she said.

  When I opened my eyes, there he was. His hair was a little bit everywhere and he wore rumpled khakis, an equally rumpled blue button-down, and a tie that was … pink. It felt like a sort of tribute, as if he had brought me a pink rose.

  “Nice tie, Forrest,” Ms. Russo said.

  The convention center registration area was filled with other eighth-graders, all waiting to receive their name tags and fat folders of information about the day’s events. Some were lugging what looked like science experiments. Others were tapping away on laptops. Immediately, I felt like the person who had not studied enough for the test.

  “Ten minutes until you’re on,” Ms. Russo said, leading us through a winding series of crowded hallways and ballrooms. Finally, we found the SPEAKERS ONLY door and walked together down a long, sloping corridor. We were at stage level and a woman with a STAFF T-shirt was waiting for us like the hostess at the entrance of a restaurant.

  “Colwin and McCann?” she asked.

  Forrest and I looked at each other, reacting to the odd sound of our names mashed together like that.

  “Yes,” Ms. Russo answered for us.

  The hostess passed us on to another staff person who led us up to the stage, but just close enough so we could see the seats filling up and no one could see us yet. The room looked large enough to host a royal wedding.

  “You’ll be introduced. Then walk to the podium and turn on the microphone. Little red button,” the stagehand told us. “Here’s your clicker for the PowerPoint.”

  Now, with no way to escape, my heart was beating fast.

  “Why did I agree to this?” I asked Ms. Russo, some panic in my voice.

  “Because you’ll do a great job telling the world about the Pink Locker Society,” she said.

  “But I don’t even like oral report day in English—and that’s in front of only twenty-five people.”

  I saw Bet’s smile behind her video camera. Then the stagehand shooed away Bet, Kate, and Ms. Russo to their seats. He attached a tiny microphone to Forrest’s jacket lapel and told me I could use the one attached to the podium. Forrest and I stood alone, waiting for the call. The audience hushed. We could hear the emcee giving instructions about how people should move all the way over in their rows.

  “We have people standing in back,” he said. “This is a sold-out show.”

  “Great,” I said, gripping my note cards tightly.

  Standing in the dark, Forrest leaned down and whispered in my ear. “Don’t worry. You’ll be great.”

  Before I could react to his soft words in my ear, we heard, “Let’s welcome Jemma Colwin and Forrest McCann.”

  We walked together across the stage. I kept my eyes focused on the podium, our destination and where I would find the all-important red button for the microphone. Only once I located it and clicked it on did I lift my head to take in the full audience, from east to west and north to south. It was an ocean of people.

  “Hello and thank you so much for having us,” I said, my voice trembling like an instrument I was just learning to play.

  I wondered how I’d ever be able to get through a dozen slides. I should have set my alarm extra early and gone for a run to calm my nerves. Then an idea hit me. The Pink Locker Society is about being honest and asking for help. I could, right at this moment, do exactly that.

  “Has anyone here ever been really nervous?”

  A big show of hands, including Forrest, who was not expecting this audience participation segment.

  “Well, the truth is, I’m really nervous right now. And it helps me to know that you have had times like that, too. The Pink Locker Society is an advice-giving Web site for girls, a safe place where people can admit stuff about themselves and get help. So I’m standing here thinking: What would we say to someone like me if she wrote in to say she was nervous about making a big presentation?”

  I set down my note cards and my PowerPoint clicker.

  “I think we’d say, number one, be prepared, which I am. Sort of. I prepared by spending this entire school year reading hundreds of questions sent in by girls, and boys, at my school.”

  There were some giggles when I said boys had written in, too.

  “Yes, boys do write in to the PLS. Forrest will talk about boys in a minute. But I can tell you that they wanted to know some of the same stuff girls want to know: How do I know if my crush likes me? And am I normal?”

  The room was quiet and I no longer felt as fidgety. I moved back to the podium and stepped through my note cards and slides. I saw people taking notes as I explained the process we went through to train ourselves, set up the Web site, and begin taking questions from the girls at Margaret Simon Middle School.

  “We specialize in the PBBs—periods, bras, and boys,” I said, and clicked on a slide that explained it in bold type.

  The audience laughed and nudged each other.

  “It’s okay to laugh. I’m used to it. But these body changes—and let me just say it’s not just girls who are going through body changes in middle school—are one hundred percent normal. It happens to all of us, so should everyone be worried and frightened about it?”

  “She’s right,” I heard Forrest say.

  He had turned on his microphone and I accepted that as my cue to let him talk about the very early steps of the Blue Locker Society.

  “Okay, so we tried a Blue Locker Society and it wasn’t perfect,” Forrest said. “Boys—well, speaking for myself—I don’t want to talk this whole thing to death. I also felt weird asking guys to be in the Blue Locker Society, to be honest. But guys like to play trash-can basketball, so I created a trash-can basketball league.”

  I had been enjoying not speaking, but suddenly my heart rate sped up and I felt sweat on my palms. Forrest hadn’t told me it was an actual league. Was he really going to talk to Tomorrow’s Leaders Today about trash-can basketball?

  “We have a sweet location up on our school roof,” Forrest said, and showed his own PowerPoint slide of the gravelly school roof.

  OMG, he is really going to crash and burn here. We are supposed to be talking about helping other people get through middle school and puberty!

  “But I made a requirement of anyone who wanted to play with us up on the roof. Eighth-graders had to bring a sixth-grader or a seventh-grader with them. So we weren’t solving hundreds of problems directly like Jemma and her crew, but it was, like, a good deed for the older guys. You have to hang out with younger guys at school, get to know them.”

  Forrest flashed to a slide showing a mix of upper-and lowerclassmen on the roof together.

  “It’s not our only problem, but guys want to have a group of friends and feel, you know, cool. And this was a way to do that for sixth- and seventh-graders, too. We just upgraded to a Nerf hoop and we’re picking seventh-graders who will take over the club next year. Any questions?” Forrest said, handing the clicker back to me.

  I was nearly speechless, except that we had to answer audience questions and there were many. The guys in the audience—so typical!—didn’t ask too many, but Forrest got a few. There were loads for me from girls:

  How do you start a Pink Locker Society?

  Where do you meet?

  How many girls do you need?

  What if you don’t give good advice?

  How do you set up a Web site?

  Would it look good to have something like this on a college application?

  One dark-haired girl wearing a sequined beret st
ood up from the audience.

  “You guys are so awesome,” she said. “I can’t even imagine all the people you have helped. You’re like middle-school guardian angels.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that,” I said. “It’s just basic advice. Anyone can do it. That’s why we’re here.”

  “She just doesn’t want to brag,” Forrest said. “The PLS is amazing and not everyone would be this good at it. I know for a fact that Jemma helped someone who was being bullied. She confronted the bully herself. And another time, she saved her friend’s life, who was choking.”

  People applauded, and I felt my face redden. I nervously tucked my hair behind my ear. Suddenly I felt so drained. We had done it. Made the trip, made the presentation. I felt entirely out of answers.

  Just in time, the emcee thanked us and told the group that we were nominated to speak at the international Tomorrow’s Leaders Today conference. There was a little more applause and then he said the next session would be starting in ten minutes. I removed my name-tag necklace and felt officially off duty.

  “That was wonderful, Jemma. And you, too, Forrest,” Ms. Russo said. “People are asking if you’ll do speaking engagements at their schools.”

  “That’s amazing. You’re a star, Jemma,” Kate said.

  Bet hadn’t turned her camera off since we hit the stage. I smiled at her. Doing another presentation was not something I wanted to think about right then. I looked in Bet’s camera lens and was relieved to finally say, “That’s a wrap.”

  Thirty-two

  Back at the hotel, there was a bouquet of pink flowers waiting for us at the lobby desk. Piper, looking well-rested, was waiting, too.

  “They’re from Principal Finklestein,” she said. “He says congratulations and to expect to be recognized during the awards ceremony at graduation.”

  I rolled my eyes and Kate laughed.

  “Jemma was great, Piper. You should have seen her.”

  “I heard. Forrest texted me,” Piper said.

  “I think I need a nap,” I said.

  “That’s fine,” Ms. Russo said. “Why don’t you rejoin the group at two, when we’re going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.”

  “And Central Park,” Kate said.

  I took myself upstairs, ate a bagel Mrs. Pinsky left for me, and fell deeply asleep. When I woke up, I felt refreshed and sooooooo glad that our presentation was finally over. But when I looked in the mirror, I was a bit rumpled. I shouldn’t have slept in my fancy clothes. I switched from the cream skirt to jeans. I left on the pearls because it seemed like a classy New York thing to do.

  When a place’s slogan is “5,000 years of art,” you know you are not going to see even half of it in a single afternoon. Mrs. Pinsky said Piper, Kate, Bet, and I could be on our own at the museum, so we made it a scavenger hunt. We’d visit just a handful of artworks but really good ones. My mom asked me to visit her favorite painting, Juan de Pareja, by Velásquez. Bet wanted to see all the armor. Mrs. Pinsky recommended the exhibit on important women photographers.

  “Let’s not forget the gift store,” Piper said.

  “Agreed,” said Kate.

  We moved swiftly up staircases, elevators, and escalators. We were often lost, but if you’re going to be lost, you couldn’t ask for more interesting scenery. We bumped into thousand-year-old pottery and antique ballgowns before we found Juan de Pareja. He stared out at us, dignified, from somewhere in the sixteen hundreds. Next, we found the armor and ghostly knights on horseback.

  “Let’s talk knights in shining armor, Jem,” Piper said. “What’s up with you and McCann?”

  “Nothing,” I said a little too quickly. On the one hand, our presentation was over, so the only reason for us to spend time together was over. On the other hand …

  “It’s not nothing. He so likes you,” Piper said.

  “I think so, too,” Kate said.

  “Maybe he likes you, Piper,” I said.

  “Me? That was a one-time thing, believe me,” Piper said. “Not that I think he’s bad news or anything.”

  “He was very complimentary of Jemma at the Tomorrow’s Leaders Today conference,” Bet said.

  I admit to replaying our morning together, but now I wished everyone would stop talking about him/me/us. I wished I had packed my soda tab bracelet. It was a silly thing, but it helped me. Did I have the strength to withstand this? It was a smart goal to stop obsessing about a boy who clearly didn’t like me, but what if he actually did? In that case, I didn’t know what my goal should be.

  “Let’s go to the Temple of Dendur,” I said, and linked arms with Bet.

  We strode across miles of gallery floor until we were there. It was not hard to find, as it was enormous and a top attraction for which there were signs. Being inside an Egyptian temple from 15 BC helped me escape from myself. We stopped beside the reflecting pool, listened half-heartedly to a nearby tour guide, and realized we were already late for our meet-up with Mrs. Pinsky.

  Trying to find the museum exit proved the toughest scavenger hunt of all. Galleries turned into other galleries, from Byzantine art to the American section, with its full facade of a colonial home. We moved through the armor, endless ancient sculptures, chalices, and shards of pottery, but we still hadn’t found the way out. We had wound our way back to the temple and our hearts felt low. New York could wear a person out. My brain refused to accept any more new information. I thought of home and its simple floor plan, how easy it was to find my way.

  “Stay put,” Mrs. Pinsky texted us, and came to the rescue.

  She ushered us to the main entrance, where we walked down steep steps and on toward Central Park. I felt homesick, I guess, but the expanse of nature did my head good. Spring had come to the park, with green grass and lush leaves on the trees. We walked downhill in this canyon of the city as evening closed in. We met up with the rest of our group, lined up for burgers and shakes at an outdoor stand, and ate in the evening twilight under white festival lights. The mood at our long table turned sentimental, with talk of next year, which would bring different high schools and sad farewells.

  Kate, Bet, and I had applied to Charter, but we didn’t know if we got in. Piper was going to Cedar Cliff High School. Of course, you could still be friends with people even if you didn’t go to the same school. It’s not like one of us was moving. As part of my pact with myself, I hadn’t asked Forrest where he’d be going to high school.

  I took the last noisy sip of my shake and surveyed the outdoor dining room, eyeing the Margaret Simon Middle School Class of 2011. Everyone seemed to laugh a little harder than usual at each other’s jokes, and draped arms around each other more than we had to. Walking back to the hotel, I didn’t know if I should be sad for what was ending or happy for what was to come.

  Thirty-three

  Before we boarded the bus, I made a last check-in with Mom. It yielded no news. She was still waiting, the twins apparently in no hurry to be born. I gave Kate the report and we checked our luggage in the cargo hold. Unlike my in-bound trip, I was determined to stay awake for the ride home. We found seats about midway, not directly in front of Forrest but not that far from him, either. Mrs. Pinsky sat up front with some of the other worn-out chaperones. Ms. Russo positioned herself near the four of us.

  “Girls, I think we’ve got to talk about next steps,” she said.

  She meant the next generation of the Pink Locker Society, a topic that was oh-so-bittersweet. It was in the same category as the imminent farewells to our friends. It signaled the end. I kept feeling guilty that we weren’t answering any questions while we were in New York, but there was really no way. Ms. Russo said, in addition to picking new girls, we should choose a date that we’d stop answering questions for the school year and let our readers know.

  “We nominated Mimi Caritas,” I said.

  “And Shannon Andersen,” Piper said.

  “That’s only two,” Kate said. “Who else?”

  “We should have three at
a minimum. Four is even better,” Ms. Russo said.

  “These girls are going to absolutely pass out when they hear they have been picked. It would make an excellent documentary-style show,” Bet said.

  “Except I’m not sure everyone should know who they are,” I said.

  “Agreed,” Piper said.

  “Hey, look,” I said, pointing out the faraway New York City skyline as we sped down the highway.

  The bus had just crossed a giant bridge. It felt a little like a spell had been broken.

  “Au revoir, New York,” Piper said.

  The trip was a sort of dream that had ended, and it was back to real life. On top of everything, or maybe because of everything, my stomach hadn’t felt right all morning. I excused myself and went to the bathroom in the back of the bus. It was a long walk there past a million people, including Forrest. The bus lurched and I had to regain my balance like a sailor on a ship. I kept on going and passed by Taylor. She pulled on my arm.

  “Stop by when you’re on your way back to your seat,” she said.

  Even though I’d helped her, we were not super-friendly. So I wondered what she had to say and I wanted to know if it had something to do with her and Forrest. Every time I let myself think he might like me (as everyone was saying), I remembered how he was so worried about Taylor and her bullying problem. I checked that the narrow bathroom door was marked “vacant” and went inside. The bathroom was less insulated than the rest of the bus and it felt closer to the outside, and certainly louder. So for the first thirty seconds, I was thinking about the noise and how I didn’t want to be in there for too long. But then everything changed. Yes, my life changed in a coach bus bathroom.

  I spotted a smudge of something reddish-brown on my underwear. The stain had ever so slightly leaked through my jeans. It was by no means a large stain, but it was there, red and unmistakable. So I had the thrill and delight of finally, finally, FINALLY getting my period. I felt relief and, weirdly, a sense of pride. I was just glad to have crossed this important bridge and crossed it while I was still in eighth grade. I’d go into the summer and into high school as a fully functioning, grown-up girl.